Letter from the Editor

On Monday, I did what most of you probably did: I skipped work because of the snow. Oh, there's little doubt I could have made it in to work. I would have had to drive slower, but a three-inch snow doesn't stop the rest of the civilized world from going about its business. But no one would have been there, so why bother?

Don't get me wrong. As I sat by a blazing fire, book on my lap, coffee at my side, I was grateful for the gift of a day off. But it felt like more than that. It felt like a holiday.

A snow day here has all the trappings of a traditional holiday. It begins, like Christmas, with a shopping frenzy, as we scurry to grocery stores to stock up on our traditional Snow Day foods: bread and milk. The Snow Day spirit abounds as we wait in long lines, smiling and laughing in anticipation of the excitement to come. "They're saying we might get six inches," the cashier says. Oooh, goody!

And when Snow Day comes, as with all holidays, we get a day off to spend with friends and family. We make Snow Day lawn decorations — creative creatures and forts. We have snowball fights. And we somehow manage to overcome our deathly fear of driving in the snow to drive all over town to our few meager hills, where we spend hours sliding on homely little sleds of cardboard and plastic. It's so cheery!

The streets are mostly clear, but the sidewalks are filled with pedestrians enjoying the snow-covered magnolias and monkey grass and watching their dogs make yellow snow. Another tradition!

I say it's high time we recognize that we in the South do snow differently. Up North, they see it as weather, as extra work — shoveling, scraping, etc. In the South, the snow melts before we have to deal with any of that tedious stuff, so we see the snow as a rare gift, a welcome change in our routine. And, let's be honest. We see it as a paid holiday.

So why not formalize it? The mayor and city council could strike a blow for the city's beleaguered image by declaring the first significant snowfall of the year an official Memphis holiday. Imagine the happy PR we'd get from all over. We'd be seen as a quirky and fun town. Forbes would be hard-pressed to call us miserable, for sure. It's just crazy enough to work.